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Talk: Mark Power and Daniel Cockrill -Tues 6th Sept

Between 2006 and 2010, photographer Mark Power and poet Daniel Cockrill made a number of road trips together across England and the results are a truly collaborative body of work that combines Mark’s pictures and Dan’s poems. After a successful exhibition a few years back, they are now self-publishing a book of the work.

Join us (in a new venue for this month) for a very special launch that will combine poetry readings and discussion around the trips and the photographs, from both Mark and Daniel.

Destroying the Laboratory for the Sake of the Experiment – Mark Power & Daniel Cockrill

Beginning in 2006 and continuing (when time allowed) over the next four years, photographer Mark Power and poet Daniel Cockrill made several road trips across England, stopping at a range of towns and cities along the way. They were trying to better understand the rise of nationalism then (as now) evident in the UK, as well as notions of Englishness, concepts much discussed in the media at the time.

The project is a true collaboration, in that they always travelled together and experienced much the same things. As time progressed the pair witnessed their country slide into recession and the government introduce austerity measures, although little seemed to alter in the fabric of the landscape. What they did notice was something more abstract, more of a state of mind among the population as many began to blame others – and immigration in particular – for perceived misfortunes. Dan attempted to catch something of this mood in his poetry while Mark continued to photograph the backdrop against which the story unfolded.

Although they concluded the work in 2010 with an exhibition in London (in collaboration with the sculptor Jim Wilson and, in particular, the designer Dominic Brookman, who created several ‘treatments’ of poems and pictures) it was not until now that they’ve chosen to self-publish the book. Looking at the work today, with the benefit of hindsight, it’s possible to sense the changing mood in the country, of which last month’s BREXIT vote was perhaps the sad but inevitable conclusion.